Free Cash Flow Calculator

Free cash flow (FCF) measures the cash a company generates once it has covered the capital spending needed to keep the business running. That leftover cash is what management can actually put to work: paying down debt, funding dividends, buying back shares, or reinvesting in growth. Heading into 2026, with global economic growth projected at 3.2% and interest rates climbing, FCF has become a sharper tool than ever for separating durable businesses from fragile ones.

The arithmetic is straightforward. Subtract capital expenditures (CapEx) from operating cash flow (OCF), and the remainder is free cash flow. Operating cash flow captures the cash thrown off by the company's core operations, before any non-operating items or investment outlays. Capital expenditures are the dollars spent acquiring, upgrading, and maintaining physical assets such as property, industrial buildings, and equipment.

Pull your operating cash flow and capital expenditure numbers straight from the cash flow statement, and use the most current figures available. Be careful not to read FCF as a stand-in for net income; the two diverge, and free cash flow gives a more honest view of liquidity and a firm's real ability to generate cash. One caveat worth keeping in mind is that any single year can be distorted by timing or one-off events, so weigh the trend across several periods rather than a lone data point.